Grace Through Faith
by Mitsuru Aki
Summary: Sometimes it's other peoples' views that matter, not your own, because they'll show you everything you don't understand. Other times you have to take that leap of Faith, whether you believe in yourself or not. That's just the way the world works. SoRiku.


Disclaimer: No, I do not own Kingdom Hearts. Or Final Fantasy. Any of them. You're all shocked, I'm sure. Me? Yeah, I've been sulking about it for a while now.

Author's Note: **PLEASE READ. **This fic was inspired by Lady Karai's awesome story Dance with Me, but mostly by the recent uproar over California's Proposition 8 and a conversation I had with a friend about the aforementioned subject. There will be a variety of viewpoints on homosexuality and gay rights throughout this story, but NOTHING here is meant to deliberately offend anyone in any way, shape, or form.

You are allowed to get angry, or voice your views on what I've written—please do. I would love to hear your thoughts on this, positive or negative. They will not, however, deter me from continuing to update this fic. I am expecting some controversy over this, and I will be very surprised if I don't receive any. This is the only time I will write this. You have been warned.

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_Grace Through Faith_

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_Ephesians 2:8-10~ "For it is by Grace you have been saved, through Faith--and it is not from yourselves,_

_ it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do _

_good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."_

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Prologue: Six years previous

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The yelling and screaming had pervaded the house for nearly two hours now. He'd been sent to his room with a curt "Sora_, leave_" from his father, the man's green eyes coldly focused on his other son. His mother had looked just as terrifying, arms crossed tightly over her chest and a fire in her eyes that he hadn't seen since he and his brother accidentally destroyed half his father's lab with a bouncy ball and some misguided attempts to catch it. That had been bad.

But this was much, much worse.

This was a showdown of epic proportions. His parents were not going to back down or allow any sort of disagreement and his brother had looked like a trapped animal, determined to get his way or die fucking trying.

Twelve years old and Sora understood that everything going on beneath his floorboards would have a lasting impact on all of their lives.

Burrowing under his quilts, he pressed his pillow against his ears, eyes burning as his mother started _shrieking_. He wished he didn't have ears, he didn't want them, didn't want to hear this. He wasn't even sure what this was about really, something with his brother's college, and 'inappropriate behavior', and boys.

Sora curled up in a ball. It wasn't fair. Ever since his sibling had left for this "college" thing he'd found himself alone in the house, struggling to get used to the uncharacteristic silence and lack of a presence that should have been there. His brother'd finally come home after a really, really long time and he didn't even get to see him. All he wanted was for them to spend time together like they used to, so what was with all the fighting downstairs?

The muted sound of his brother's voice overrode their mother's, somehow both furious and fearful, and his father's rose to meet it. The man's indecipherable speech was sharp and biting. Sora shivered at the sound of it and drew his blankets closer, whimpering quietly and pressing his face into the warmth of his bedcovers. He wished he wasn't in here alone. Normally _he_ was with him when they started shouting; they weren't supposed to be shouting _at_ him.

Voices, voices, voices wormed their way under and through his feeble attempt at plugging his ears, escalating until he could hear his brother screaming over both his parents, his words breaking several times. Something shattered with the distinct jingle of breaking porcelain, the noise repeating until Sora realized someone down there was actually throwing things. No one _ever_ threw things in the house. Real fear slipped into his stomach as he froze, holding his breath as he listened with morbid fascination to the chaos taking place in the living room: male voices yelling and his mother's wails, more animalistic than sorrowful, meaning she was enraged past the point of speaking.

Someone was crying, possibly more than one person, but the destruction of fragile objects had apparently ceased; a heavy, exhausted silence settled gradually over the house. Sora slid his hands from the pillow over his head to the mattress, intertwining his fingers and clenching his eyes tightly shut against the saltwater building at the corners and threatening to spill. Taking a few deep breaths, willing himself not to cry—crying didn't help anything, remember, _he_ always said so—he tried to clear his mind and beat back all the turmoil inside him.

_Please…Dear God…My brother says you can help me with lots of stuff._

A door slammed downstairs, the finality of the sound making Sora curl up even tighter.

_I don't know what's going on…and I'm scared. Cuz I think something bad's going to happen. But can you help my brother? Everyone was so mad…did he do something wrong? I just want things to be normal like they used to be…so can you? Will you help us? Please? I promise I won't do anything bad ever again…_

He must have fallen asleep because the next thing he knew, when he opened his eyes, there was light streaming through his bedroom windows. He was disoriented, he felt incredibly sad for some reason, and his eyes were sore. Sora muttered to himself and slipped out of bed, padding over to the door as last night's events came back to him. He hesitated as he reached for the doorknob, straining his ears for any sound at all. Nothing out of the ordinary that he could tell, but he'd been wrong before.

Carefully pushing his door open, he glanced warily around the hallway, searching for his mother in case she was in one of her moods, the frequency of which had been increasing as of late. All clear. Tiptoeing down the hall and to the stairs, Sora tried to make as little noise as possible, making sure to avoid all the squeaky spots and any unintentional clumsiness.

Sticking close to the wall, he crept James Bond-style into the living room. The room was completely clean and empty; nothing out of place other than some absent pieces of the china in his mother's cabinet. Sora looked away, knowing what had happened to the missing pieces the other night.

He hurried across the carpet to the kitchen doorway, stopped, and blinked in surprise.

Both of his parents were sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast, his mother looking through a magazine of questionable integrity and his father examining what were probably lab papers of some sort. They looked up as he stopped in the doorway.

"Sora," his mother greeted him with a small smile and a raised eyebrow, her short blonde hair swinging as her head tilted to look at him. "You're up early."

"Yeah…morning, Mom. Morning, Dad."

His father glanced at him and nodded, going back to his papers, his long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail and glasses perched on his nose.

His mother's eyes narrowed at the other man. "Vexen, how many times have I told you _not_ to bring your work to the table when we're eating?"

Green eyes rose slowly to meet hers, sternly staring at her. "About as often as I've requested you not read those trashy magazines at meals, _Larxene_."

They glared at each other across the table, fighting an intangible battle of wills until they seemed to reach a mutual agreement, pushing the offensive objects towards the ends of the table.

"Umm," Sora started cautiously, not quite sure how to approach the subject in case there were any lingering bad feelings, which was very likely. "Is…is he still here?" he asked timidly.

It might have been his overactive imagination, but he thought he saw his parents tense slightly, both of them looking at him once again.

"Who?" Larxene asked, setting an elbow on the table and resting her chin in her hand, tilting her head to imply her curiosity.

Glancing at them, Sora noticed there was a distinct emptiness to their gaze, a hardness behind the green of their eyes that almost made him falter.

Almost.

"What are you talking about, Sora?" Vexen asked blankly, pulling his glasses off his face to stare at his youngest son.

Caught in the crossfire of both parents' attention, Sora froze, eyes darting from one adult to the other. Something was off; he'd never harbored such a strong feeling that there was something so distinctly _wrong _with his current situation as he did right now. His parents never ignored a fight as though it had never happened. He could see the walls they'd built up behind their eyes to hide their feelings, saw calculations being made as the quiet continued to stretch. And it scared him.

Sora bravely pushed on. "Where…where's Roxas?"

He could have heard a gnat exhale in the silence that followed his inquiry, the whole house holding its breath in anticipation of an answer.

Then a smile crept lazily across his mother's face, slightly malicious, a frozen fire back in her eyes. Sora blanched at the expression, knowing that nothing good was going to come out of her mouth.

"Who's Roxas, Sora dear?"

Sora stared at his mother in disbelief, eyes flitting in confusion to his father. "Umm…my…brother…?

Was this supposed to be a trick question?

Vexen raised a narrow blond eyebrow, his expression daring his son to contradict him. "Sora, you're an only child. You don't have a brother."

Larxene nodded in agreement, eyelashes fluttering. "Whyever would you think you had a brother?" Her voice was deceptively sweet, setting off every mental alarm he had.

Bewilderment sunk its claws into Sora's brain along with the distinct feeling that he was missing something _really_ important. Why…?

"I…but he…Rox was just here…"

The blond, green-eyed woman tutted and shook her head. "Come on Sora, sit down and have something to eat. Are you hungry?"

Sora stared at the breakfast food spread across the table without really seeing it, too busy fighting with this newly acquired information to formulate a response. This wasn't right. There was no way he'd hallucinated having a brother for twelve years without being aware of it.

"Rox…did he leave already? I didn't get a chance to say anything. Roxas—"

"Sora, you don't—" Vexen began, but Sora kept talking, not willing to believe what he was hearing.

"—told me we could visit the beach this weekend. Roxas _said—_"

"_Sora_."

"—we would go, and Roxas _always_ keeps his promises. Roxas—"

"_Stop saying his name!"_ his mother exploded suddenly, erupting out of her chair and slamming both palms on the table with a bang. "_Don't _ever_ say his name in our presence, in our house, again. Do I make myself clear?"_

The twelve-year-old gasped and scrambled backward, eyes widening, into the kitchen doorframe. An acidic combination of fear and confusion melded painfully in his chest, restricting his lungs, pulse pounding in his ears. The burning sensation started again at the backs of his eyes. He could feel himself shaking in the face of his mother's fury, her burning eyes narrowed, mouth twisted in a snarl Sora had never seen before.

"You are our only son, and you never had, do not have, and will never have a brother! _Understood_?"

"…yes," Sora whispered, distraught blue eyes flitting from one parent to the other. "But—"

"This conversation is over, Sora. Don't make me tell you again."

"Okay…I'm sorry Mom…"

He took a deep breath, air moving in and out of his lungs in a shaky stream he just didn't have the energy to steady. Whatever little appetite Sora'd had vanished without a trace, and the only thing he felt like doing was going back to sleep. Maybe…maybe if he went back to his room, he'd realize this was only a really weird dream, Roxas wasn't gone, he couldn't be…

Feeling as though his mind was submerged in water, Sora turned and headed back to the living room, mysteriously deaf to any other words that might have been said although he could feel his father's eyes burning into his back. Heavy blue eyes rose to glance at a framed picture on the wall, one taken last Christmas with him and Mom and Dad and—

He jerked to a stop, staring at the photo within the frame. That wasn't the right picture.

The three of them should have been standing around his mother in their formal Christmas wear, her seated in a chair set at an angle to the camera. It was one of the few pictures in the house where the expression in Roxas's eyes matched the one on his face.

But it was gone.

In its place was the photograph his grandmother had taken when they'd spent the summer at the beach, much to his father's displeasure. Roxas had come down with a cold and spent the day in bed, so he wasn't in the picture.

_He wasn't in the picture…_

Sora felt his breath quicken, a vise tightening around his heart and making his panic rise. _No…Mom just wanted something new…please tell me they didn't…_

Speed walking into the living room, eyes darting around the walls at the other family photographs, he took note of the subjects within each. Birthdays, holidays, vacations. Roxas' graduation picture was gone. _Anything_ with Roxas in it was gone.

His heart dropped through the floor as he turned to examine every photo again, despair settling over him in heavy waves. How could he have missed this his first time through here? _Roxas…_

The stairs came into view as Sora completed his circuit and he was hit with a sudden thought. _The photos are gone…but maybe…if…_

He ran for the stairs, bare feet pounding across the floor and up the carpeted steps. Roxas' room was right across the hall from his, making it convenient for Sora to creep into his brother's room whenever he felt scared as a small child. Like now. Clawing at the doorknob, panic flared in his stomach for a brief moment when it refused to open before he remembered how to work the mechanism. He threw himself into the room as the door swung open, looking up expectantly at what was supposed to be a bedroom that was clearly _Roxas_.

The room was empty, completely bare.

Sora felt his body temperature drop a couple degrees, disbelief invading his senses in a numbing cloud. There was nothing left, not even furniture. The blue carpet was deeply imprinted where the bed, dresser, nightstand and bookshelf had sat; the only things reassuring him that yes, _someone_ had lived here in this room at some point.

He hesitated in the doorway, wondering if Roxas's things would reappear if he slammed the door shut and opened it a second time. How could he have slept through all of this? What kind of brother was he? Backing out of the deserted room, Sora let the door click quietly shut. He stared at the wooden panel separating him from what used to be Roxas's. What had happened to make everything change so fast…? It wasn't fair.

Shuffling back into his own room, Sora tried to swallow past the lump in his throat, ignoring the saltwater escaping from his eyes. _Roxas…you said we'd get to see each other again…you didn't say anything about leaving…_

He dragged a fist roughly over his face and sniffed loudly, heading to his nightstand and yanking the drawer open. Gently, Sora removed the wallet his brother had given him last Christmas only four or so months ago and flipped it open, searching through the internal plastic slip-covered cards and mini photographs. A hollowness took up residence in his chest as he stared at the empty space where his brother's picture used to be. They must have gone through his bedroom while he was sleeping.

Whirling angrily, Sora chucked the wallet across the room, the small object bouncing off his closet door and onto the floor. The brunet dove for his bed and pulled the covers up over his head, curling tightly into a ball, just like the previous night, and let himself cry like the lost, confused little boy he was. His brother was _gone._ It shouldn't have been that easy. Everything…

And just like that, any evidence that Roxas had ever been part of their family was erased.

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Author's Note: Whew. Talk about emotionally draining. And thank you so much to those of you who helped me edit this and encouraged this idea! This would not have been ready so quickly without you. You all know who you are.

Review! Feedback of any kind will be wonderful and much appreciated. Your thoughts on this are important to me. Working on the next chapter which, I swear, will be much longer.


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